Apple IIGS 'Mark Twain'

Figured I’d share since I like this bit of ‘might have been’ apple history.

http://www.whatisthe2gs.apple2.org.za/mark-twain-daughter-board

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It seems Mark Twain was a much-expected but never-completed or never-released 2-year upgrade to the IIgs. From a nearby article:

Mark Twain, front

Mark Twain, front – Photo credit: Tony Diaz

In this version, the disk slot was on the left side of the computer. This location makes far more sense than it would to put it on the right side, where it would block access to some of the slots on the motherboard. On the Mark Twain, the 3.5-inch disk drive sat on top of a SCSI hard drive, and a redesigned power supply sat in the back, all on the left side. Even with this redesign, a couple of the classic IIGS slots had been removed, in order to make it all fit.

This might be a good place to mention the idea that fears of outclassing the Macintosh led to the '816 in the IIgs to have an unspectacular clock speed and therefore the machine to have an unspectacular performance. Oh look, there’s a relevant thread on 6502.org:
1986: Woz on the 65816 and Apple IIGS

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Even apple fans have commented on the iiGS’s underclocking.

Ever since I learned of the GS I wanted a time machine to give ten year old me one that has all the bells and whistles.

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Looks like the “nearby article” noticed (and objected to) my short 2009 “Centossa” post on Stories of Apple. It was of course based on the superlative AppleDesign book, but I’m afraid a lot of people haven’t noticed that it was published on April the 1st and the text is intentionally ambiguous. :wink:

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Welcome, @nda! Don’t worry too much about the ‘nearby article’ feature - it keeps popping up for me too. You can create a new thread linked to an old one by selecting ‘Reply as Linked Topic’ in the bendy-arrow menu at top left of the composition window. But don’t even worry about that: most important is to post your thoughts, either as a topic or a response!

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I seem to remember Joe Kohn (hope I spelled that right) had a complete Mark Twain? Was that him in the video? I couldn’t make out what the speaker was saying very well.

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